


And I could be enough

by anamia



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, and the effects thereof, background kim/jason, being queer and closeted, briefly, lonely people figuring out how to be less lonely, really this is just an excuse for zack and trini to hang out and be friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 09:12:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10590903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamia/pseuds/anamia
Summary: “Why do you call me that, anyway?” she asks, sitting with her back to a rock as the wind blows smoke from their bonfire away towards Angel Grove. “It's not like you don't know my name.”“Aside from the part where you literally scaled a mountain and jumped over a ravine to avoid having to have a conversation with us, I don't know. Just a feeling, you know? Takes one to know one, and all that.”





	

Life settles slowly, after they send Rita flying. The mayor declares a state of emergency, in the immediate aftermath, and there's enough footage that the governor agrees to send relief in the form of money and national guardsmen. Angel Grove is not rich, and the money is as welcome as the out of towners are suspect. Trini patches up her bedroom, now barely even a blip on her parents' radar and easy enough to explain away as collateral damage, while Jason dives head first into the main relief effort, repairing Angel Grove with as much passion as he had defended it. Kim shadows him, tongue sharp as ever and eyes darting everywhere, always on high alert for any incoming threats, whether they be power-crazed aliens or angry high school girls.

It takes a full week for school to open back up, and almost a month after that for things to return to any kind of normal. Trini sits next to Kim in biology and passes notes to Jason in math. She talks with Billy about his dad and goes hiking with him and Zack to find more treasures. Once a week, the five of them meet at the mine, make a fire and look down at the city. Sometimes they spend the night, sometimes they disperse as the sun starts to sink, sometimes they go see Zordon and Alpha in the ship and get to know them as equals, rangers in their own right rather than hapless trainees. Every so often Zordon reasserts his authority, orders them into the pit for training, watches their progress with satisfaction rather than despair. Even without her armor Trini can flip a man twice her size and three times her weight, can dodge a punch and throw one, can run a mile without running out of breath or energy. She gives her brothers piggyback rides around the house and yard, smiling as they call her their megazord and swear destruction upon the enemies of Angel Grove. (She tells Billy once that they both want to be the blue ranger, and he can barely form a coherent sentence in his surprised delight. Jason laughs and tells him that now everyone knows how cool he's been all along, which just makes it worse.)

Zack still isn't going to school, and he doesn't participate much in the rebuilding of Angel Grove, so she takes to going up to find him, Saturdays when the others are all in detention for crimes that barely anyone even remembers after all the excitement. He seems surprised to see her, the first few times, as though he half expected them to just fade back out of his life now that the danger has passed. Trini can empathize.

“What are you going to do now?” she asks, one day when they're sitting idly on a cliff's edge. Once, the drop would have terrified her, would have sent her scurrying several feet back just to be safe, but she knows from experience that she can survive the fall, so she sits with her legs swinging into the void, occasionally kicking a pebble loose to tumble down into the ravine.

He shrugs. “Don't know,” he says. “Haven't thought about it. Live in the moment, you know?”

“My parents are starting to bug me about college,” she says, tracking a distant raptor's flight with her eyes. Her vision is better now, sharper and more defined, designed to spot out enemy weaknesses before they can find hers. Zordon keeps talking about how ranger powers optimize them for combat, make them the ultimate protectors, but Trini prefers to use her newfound abilities for other purposes. She's had to start cheating at hide-and-seek because she can hear her brothers breathing from a room away, and she hasn't lost a pen in weeks.

“What, already? Don't you have at least a year left?”

“Can't start too early,” she says. “Or so they tell me. I think they've just picked something new, since they can't worry about my friends anymore.” She'd introduced Jason to her parents, a few weeks after the fight, when his growing reputation as hard-working member of the reconstruction team was starting to eclipse his reputation as troublemaker and destroyer of Angel Grove's football hopes. He'd been charming and polite, attractive and intelligent and male, everything her parents could ask for. They'd looked at him with relief so palpable Trini almost thought she could bottle it and keep it as a souvenir, and told him over and over and _over_ that he was welcome whenever he wanted to drop by and that they were so glad she was finally making friends. She hadn't been able to look him in the eye for days afterwards, too embarrassed about the badly hidden sympathy in his expression whenever he thought about it.

Zack shakes his head, kicking a foot against the cliff side and sending a shower of pebbles of his own cascading downwards. “Tell me about it. My mom's been on my case about going to school again.”

“Why don't you?” Trini wants to know.

“Oh, you know,” he says. “Better things to do with my life than sit in a classroom listening to someone who's never had to experience life tell me stuff I'll never need to know.”

She can't really argue with that. She would have, only a few months earlier, but she knows more about Zack now, knows that he's probably had to survive on his own longer than the rest of them combined, and she can't bring herself to be sanctimonious about his choices. So she shrugs. “Fair enough.”

“What, not going to argue with me about how I'm throwing away my future?” he asks, turning to look at her. From the way he says it, the implied airquotes around 'throwing away my future' and the way his usually subtle accent fades completely into a flat, standard California drawl, she guesses that he's already had this fight, probably with Jason. Sometimes, she wonders if Jason knows just how much he sounds like his dad, and what he would do if someone pointed it out to him.

“It's your future,” she says. “I'm not going to tell you what to do with it.”

He looks at her for a minute, then shakes his head again, laughing. “You're something else, crazy girl. You know that?”

*

Homecoming comes and goes. Jason goes to the football game, sitting in the stands with his dad and Billy and Billy's mom. Kimberly doesn't, and Trini invites her over to play power rangers with her brothers and watch kaiju movies. Trini's mom looks at her with thinly veiled suspicion, but Kim turns on the charm and mentions her ex-boyfriend a lot and smooths things over. “Sorry about that,” Trini mutters when they finally get into her bedroom. 

Kim only shrugs. “I've had practice,” she says. “Amanda Clark and I used to sneak around behind her mom's back all the time.”

Trini stares at her. “Wait, you mean...?”

“Sure. Didn't go anywhere, obviously, but it was fun while it lasted.”

“But you're not...” Trini trails off, still staring at Kim with wide eyes. She can't tell if she's relieved or disappointed when Kim shakes her head.

“Probably not, but you never know. Stuff happens, things change. All I can tell you for sure that I wasn't in love with Amanda Clark.” She shrugs philosophically. Trini keeps staring, tongue-tied, until Kim takes pity on her, pulls up Netflix, and insists that Trini be an active participant in choosing the first movie.

Kim stays late, keeping Trini's brothers up past their bedtime and offering sarcastic commentary on the poor choices of movie heroes in the face of terrifying monsters. It's somehow reassuring, watching experiences so close to their own rendered as technicolor extravaganzas. It makes it seem less real, less like something that actually happened, more like an impossible dream. Trini's got holes in her walls and a compulsive need to lock her bedroom window to prove otherwise, but sitting with her brothers and her best friend, watching what is clearly a guy in a rubber suit tearing up a model city, she can distance herself from it all, at least for a little while.

Trini's mom had offered to let her spend the night, managing somehow to cram the dual emotions of 'I'm glad my daughter has  _finally_ made a friend' and 'you can sleep in the guest room but not my daughter's bedroom' into a single sentence, but Kim gets a text from Jason around midnight and slips out the back door instead. Trini tells herself that she's not upset, and she's not, not really. Kim and Jason are probably going to go hang out in Jason's backyard and drink his dad's beer and talk about how they used to be popular and how bad the new quarterback is. It's not a conversation she has any place in, and she's more than happy to leave them to it. But it leaves her restless and awake, pacing back and forth in her bedroom with nowhere to go and no one to talk to. It's weird, how only a few weeks have been long enough to not only get used to having friends but to miss them when they're not around. 

She cycles through her options. Kim and Jason are out, though she's sure that if she dropped by she'd be welcome. Billy's probably either sleeping or hanging out with the other two, and either way unavailable. (She's seen Billy Cranston drunk; they all have. She's not sure she needs to see it again – his overwhelming fondness for blowing stuff up combines badly with the lowered inhibitions of someone on their fourth drink. Jason and Zack thought it was awesome, but Trini's nerves aren't quite up to the task.)

That leaves Zack, but she hates disturbing him at night. She's never sure when he's home and when he's not, and the last thing she wants to do is rob his mom of more nights with her son. She doesn't know what, exactly, is wrong with Zack's mom – the most he ever says is that she's sick – but she can read between the lines of her friend's words and expressions and she thinks time is running out. 

Before she can make up her mind to just go to sleep alone, like a grownup, or at least someone who can look after herself, her phone buzzes. Her first thought is that it's Kim, remorseful about leaving early and inviting her over. She has an answer half composed in her head before she even opens the message, an answer which dies unwritten.

_You awake?_ It's from Zack.

_Yeah_

_Want to come out for a while? It's gorgeous out here right now_

It takes Trini about thirty seconds to make up her mind. As quietly as she can, she grabs her coat and puts her shoes on, stops by the kitchen to leave her parents a note telling them she's gone to Jason's, and sneaks out the back. The once imposing wood fence surrounding her backyard is now easily vaulted, and within minutes she's headed towards Zack's favorite spot, close enough to the train tracks to see all of Angel Grove but far enough into the mountains to feel like you're alone in the universe if you just look the other way.

He's waiting for her, back against a tree, fire smoldering a few feet away. His head is tilted up towards the sky, picking out stars from between the overhanging tree branches.

“Almost thought you weren't coming,” he says, without looking over at her. “How was the game?”

Trini shrugs, nudging him with a foot to get him to move far enough to give her a spot against the tree next to him. “Ask Jason. I spent the evening watching Kim convince my brothers that pink is the best color in the world. I think my mom almost had a fit at one point.”

Zack laughs. “Sounds like fun.” He lapses back into silence.

“What about you?” Trini asks. “I take it you weren't listening to the highlights on the radio.”

He shrugs, and she nudges him again. He pushes back, and she tightens her muscles, keeping her ground, foot just inside his personal space, a challenge he can't ignore. Sure enough, he twists until he's looking right at her, and very deliberately reaches over and pokes her. She bats his hand away at the last second and it's on, a battle of fingers and knees that almost inevitably turns into a proper tickle fight, each of them fighting with mock earnestness to find the other's openings and weak spots. By the time Zack's got her in a loose headlock and Trini's twisted her arms behind his back to get at the sensitive patch of skin on his side, they're laughing and breathless.

“Truce?” Trini gasps, wriggling a little to try and get free.

“Truce,” Zack agrees. He waits a beat, just long enough for her to narrow her eyes in preparation for a renewed assault, then lets go and settles back against the tree, still shaking with retreating laughter.

Trini follows suit. The stars twinkle above them, cold and unwelcoming and apparently inhabited. She thinks back to the monster movie from earlier, to the way she'd managed to pretend that the fight with Rita was just another story, and shivers a little. Her neck twinges where Rita threw her into a wall, though the injury healed weeks ago.

“Cold?” Zack asked, moving to shrug out of his jacket.

“No,” she says. He was right; it's gorgeous out, a perfect late summer night. Her jacket is more than enough. “It's just... do you think about it? Being a power ranger, saving the world, all of it?”

“Of course. Why wouldn't I? I mean, we're superheroes! Didn't you want to be a superhero as a kid?”

“Not really,” Trini admits. “My mom tried to get me to pretend to be a princess, but I mostly just wanted to be a dragon.”

This makes him laugh. “Wanted to rain fire down on your enemies, crazy girl?”

“Wanted to be left alone,” she corrects. “Dragons only get bothered when they kidnap princesses, so I figured I wouldn't bother and it would be perfect.”

“Sounds lonely,” Zack said.

She raises her eyebrows at him. “You're one to talk. When was the last time you came down from this mountain again?”

It comes out more sharply than she'd intended, and she winces a little. She winces again when he says, defensive and trying not to be, “Yesterday, actually.”

“Sorry,” she mutters. “I didn't mean it like that.”

“Yeah you did,” Zack says. “It's okay. Everyone does. I get it, okay? It's like Jason said. We're all fuck ups. You wanted to be an antisocial dragon and I can't even sleep in my own house half the time. It happens.”

Despite herself, Trini snorts a little. “Jason wishes he could be as fucked up as us,” she says.

“Only because he isn't actually,” Zack says, but he relaxes a little. “Living it's not as sexy as hearing about it, trust me on that.” He shifts slightly, getting more comfortable, and looks back up towards the stars. “And yeah, I think about it. I think about it a lot.”

It takes a second for Trini to switch gears back to the earlier subject. “I don't,” she admits. “Or at least I try not to. It's easier that way. I mean, we almost died.  _Everyone_ almost died. It's... it's a lot.”

“You don't think it's easier to remember the reason we _didn't_ die?” he wants to know. “I'd rather remember how we kicked her ass than how helpless it felt to watch her threaten you guys and not be able to do anything about it.” He shifts again, and she thinks she can see the skin on his fingers ripple, like he's trying not to bring up his armor. 

“I'd rather it didn't happen at all,” she says, and it feels like a weight off her chest, admitting it out loud. She can't talk about it with the others, not really. Jason sees leading the team as his road to redemption, his way of proving to himself that he's not the screw up he so vehemently proclaimed himself to be. Kim's the same, using the whole thing to get over whatever it was that landed her in trouble, that thing she still won't talk about, the one she says is ancient history and not relevant to who she is now. Billy, well, Billy's living his dream, from the friends to the super powers to the ancient, genius aliens living in the mountain. They wouldn't get it, and she hasn't even tried to bring it up with them. Zack doesn't get it either, but it feels easier to tell him, sitting outside in the middle of the night, like they did that first time when she and Zack bared their souls to the world and dared the world to reject them.

“I don't,” he says. “Oh, I mean, it would be nice if we hadn't almost failed spectacularly, but on the whole it turned out okay. And I found you guys. That makes up for everything right there, and then some.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I guess.”

“You still holding out for a dragon cave of solitude?” he wants to know. “Because I hate to break it to you, but I think we'll all be lining up to be princesses, if so. And I don't think Jason knows how to walk in heels.”

“What, and you do?”

His only answer is a grin and a wink, and she finds herself smiling back, just a little.

“But seriously, you've got to hang on to the good parts, you know? You can't change the past, and you can't just dwell on the bad stuff or it'll eat you alive, so you find the good and you hang on to it no matter what. We made friends, we fought evil, we got superpowers. That's what matters. That's what you hang on to.”

She considers this. Finally, she nods. “Yeah.” Above them the stars twinkle, relics of bygone eras and ancient times. Somewhere out there are the other pieces of the zeo crystal, is Zordon and Rita's home planet, is Rita herself, floating eternally through freezing blackness. Trini hears Zack breathing next to her and it doesn't seem quite so overwhelming.

*

As winter approaches the campouts at the old mine become less frequent. They hang out at Billy's house instead, or sometimes at Kim's, lounging in chairs and on sofas instead of on dirt and rock. Billy's mom bakes them muffins when she's home and they order pizza, watch movies and play video games. Jason's still technically under house arrest, but his dad and the cops are willing to let it slide more often now, trusting that he's displaying maturity and won't get into trouble again. It's nice, being around friends, having somewhere to go, but it's a lot to get used to all at once. At the beginning there was Rita and saving the world to occupy them, and they  _had_ to get to know each other, for the sake of being able to morph if nothing else. Now there's no threat, nothing urgent requiring them to keep bonding. Now they have to do it themselves, figure out how to spend time together and interact without the threat of imminent death hanging over them. Trini hasn't had friends in so long that sometimes, looking around at four people she once said she'd die for – and meant every word – she thinks she's forgotten how.

She and Zack still go out on weekends, or sometimes after school, when she feels so constricted by the expectations placed on her that she can barely breathe or when he can't stand to be in his house. She tells her parents that Kim's teaching her yoga and not to wait up for her, puts on warm clothes and goes to scale a sheer cliff side or dive a hundred feet into an ice-cold spring. They climb trees and play tag, leaping from branch to branch like squirrels, until they're both too tired to be anxious about anything at all.

(She asked if he wanted to meet her parents, once, since all the others had. He'd laughed long and hard and shaken his head and said, 'Crazy girl, if you want them to think you're normal I'm the last person you'd want to introduce.' She'd dropped the subject and told them that he was busy whenever they asked.)

“Why do you call me that, anyway?” she asks, sitting with her back to a rock as the wind blows smoke from their bonfire away towards Angel Grove. “It's not like you don't know my name.”

He pokes at the fire with a stick, taking his time rearranging the logs and kindling before he answers. “Do you want me to stop?”

“I don't really care,” she says, a little uncomfortably. “I was just wondering. You don't have nicknames for the others.”

“Not to their face, at least,” he says with a crooked smile. She laughs but doesn't say anything, waiting to see if he's actually going to answer. She's learned that you can wait him out, if you're patient. Zack deflects like a champion, redirects the conversation until you've forgotten what you originally want to know. He does less well with silence, so she gives it to him, looking at the fire rather than directly at him.

He knows she's figured him out, because he makes a face and settles back on his palms, eyes tracking the sparks as they rise towards the sky. “Aside from the part where you literally scaled a mountain and jumped over a ravine to avoid having to have a conversation with us, I don't know. Just a feeling, you know? Takes one to know one, and all that.”

She considers this. Then, “My parents put me in therapy, when I was twelve. Well, my dad did. My mom said there was nothing wrong with me and that I just needed to try harder, but he convinced her to try it.”

“I take it you didn't like it?”

“I didn't mind, really. It was kind of nice, having someone to talk to. But then I found out that she was telling my parents everything I said, which ruined everything.”

“How'd you find that out?”

“My mom started asking me questions about stuff I'd never told her. So I told my therapist that I wanted to run away and change my name to Matilda and join a freak show. You know, the kind of thing that would freak my parents out completely. My mom and I had a huge fight about it, and that's how I knew.”

“Smart,” he says, sounding appreciative. “On your end, I mean. Dick move on hers.”

Trini shrugs. “I'm used to it,” she says. “That's just my mom. And she wonders why I don't talk at home.” Silence falls for a bit, broken only by the soft woosh of the wind and the crackling fire. Then, “what about you?”

“Nah. Never bothered with that stuff,” he says. “Besides, even if I wanted to, it's not like we could afford it, you know? Between paying the rent and paying for my mom's medicine there's not a lot left over.”

“I'm sorry,” she says, which isn't the right thing to say, not really, but also the only thing she can think of. He waves her words away.

“Don't. Nothing to be done about it. We get by.”

“Yeah,” she says, and they lapse back into silence. Out of the corner of her eye she can see him frowning. He reaches out and pokes at the fire a little too hard, sending a shower of sparks in all directions. “Hey,” she says, drawing his attention. “Want to go test how good our night vision is? Race you to that tree over there.” She gestures towards a lone tree halfway up a mountain a good three miles away, barely distinguishable even to her augmented senses. 

In answer he dumps a bucket of water over the fire, sending a huge wave of smoke billowing upward, and takes off towards the tree. Trini takes a moment to make sure all the sparks are properly extinguished then bolts after him, determined not to let his head start give him an advantage the entire way.

*

The first time Kim kisses Jason, Zordon yells at them for almost an hour about jeopardizing the team and putting everyone in danger and about how they can't afford to risk the cohesion of their team in the name of hormones and human sentiment. Jason yells right back, about hypocrisy and being allowed to have lives and Zordon minding his own business. Kim stands next to him, holding his hand defiantly, as though daring Zordon to do more than yell. Billy and Zack and Trini exchange glances and, when it doesn't seem to be dialing down any time soon, slip out of the ship and back outside. There they wait, the watery ceiling swirling above them, letting Kim and Jason and Zordon sort out their issues alone.

“Do you think he's right?” Billy wants to know. “Zordon, I mean. About Jason and Kim. Because it would be really terrible if the team fell apart, but on the other hand they're happy and that's got to be a good thing, right? But Zordon's got more experience, so he's probably right. Do you think he's right? Maybe we should go back and tell them that's he's right. Only maybe that would just make them mad and then the team would fall apart anyway. But...”

Zack holds out a hand, laughing a little. “Calm down there,” he says. “Breathe.”

Billy stutters to a stop and takes a deep breath.

“It'll be fine,” Zack says. “I mean, they're being dumb and Zordon's being dumb, but that's nothing new. They'll figure it out.”

“You think so?” Billy asks, still looking worried.

“Yeah,” Zack says. “Don't worry about it.”

“I'm not good at not worrying,” Billy says. “Too many variables, too much that could go wrong. What do you think Trini?”

Trini starts, having zoned out a bit. “What?”

“What Zack said. Do you think he's right?”

“Probably,” Trini says absently, her eyes fixed on the floor.

Billy shoots her an odd look but, thankfully, drops the subject. Zack also glances over at her, expression unreadable, but he too lets her be.

Eventually Kim and Jason come back out, still angry but apparently having come to some kind of understanding. They don't seem surprised to see the other three still there.

“Get it all sorted?” Zack asks.

“More or less,” Jason says. Kim rolls her eyes but doesn't say anything; Trini gets the feeling that she didn't get to yell at Zordon as much as she'd wanted to.

“We're still a team?” Billy asks anxiously. “No matter what happens?”

“Yeah Billy,” Jason assures him, slinging an arm around his shoulder. Billy accepts this for a few moments then steps away, rolling his shoulders almost unconsciously to resettle his clothes properly.

“Good,” he says. “Then I gotta get home. My mom's making lasagna tonight, and that was my dad's favorite, so I don't want to miss it. She makes it just like she used to, you know, just like her mom taught her when she was a kid. She says she'll teach me, but I don't know. I don't really like cooking, you know? The instructions aren't very specific, even when they're trying to be, and it's hard to know when it's not going to work until it's too late, and then you can't fix it. Plus it's so _messy_.” Still talking he launches himself up through the ceiling. The other four glance at each other, Jason and Kim laughing a little, and follow suit.

Trini slips away from the others as they head back towards Angel Grove, her thoughts still too conflicted to deal with going home. She wanders up the winding paths, barely paying attention to where she's going, confident that she won't run into anything she can't handle. It's hard to be afraid of a twisted ankle or angry raccoon when you've faced down a crazy alien and her alien monster army.

Zack finds her a little while later. For a time they don't talk, just wander together, almost in synch with each other as they go. Finally, he says, “Want to talk about it?”

She shrugs. “Not much to talk about. It's just... I don't know. It's so easy for them, you know?” She kicks a rock out of her way, sending it careening away into a nearby tree.

He glances sidelong at her, and she thinks he hasn't understood. She's about to wave the whole subject away when he says, “Kind of makes you hate them for it, doesn't it?”

“Not really,” she says. “Just... I don't know. It's complicated.”

“Tell me about it,” he says. “I mean, the worst thing that'll happen to them is being yelled at by an alien trapped in a wall of an ancient buried spaceship and his robot lackey.”

She laughs. “I mean, when you put it that way,” she says. Then a few things click in her brain and she stops dead in her tracks. “Wait. Are you...? I mean, do you...?” She can't say it, can't make herself finish the thought, not even here, in the middle of nature with only someone she trusts intimately and entirely listening.

He stops too, a few steps ahead of her. “Yeah,” he says, and she envies the way he can just... say it, like it's no big deal. “I am.”

“And your mom...”

“Used to care. Now she just wants me to be happy. You know, after.”

She nods, and takes a long, shuddering breath. She realizes almost absently that she's trembling a little. She feels naked, even more than at that first bonfire when she said for the first time ever how much she didn't fit in with her family, more than when Rita stood over her and listed out all her flaws and her failures. Zack guides her over to a nearby tree and they sit down, almost but not quite touching, and he lets her tremble, lets her work through the sudden rush of feelings in silence, lets the fact that he  _knows_ and is still here speak everything he needs to say. Finally, when she thinks she can breathe again, she nods, and he walks back home with her, making small talk about a new stunt he's been practicing lately and letting her lecture him shakily about not being  _completely_ stupid with his superpowers.

*

(Kim and Jason break up not even a month later, and the lingering awkwardness fades fast. He still asks her to the winter formal, after Billy turns both of them down saying that he  _absolutely_ does not do parties. Trini asks Zack, who surprises all of them by actually showing up, dressed to kill and spending the entire night laughing at everyone who doesn't recognize him. The night ends back at Billy's, everyone in their half shed formal attire, watching monster movies and eating popcorn, and Trini looks around and thinks that this is what family is supposed to feel like.)

*

Zack comes back to school, spring semester. Trini doesn't know the full story behind it, but she knows Jason and Billy spent most of Christmas break working on him, comparing schedules and talking about how much they missed him. He doesn't go every day, far from it, but he goes and he sits with them at lunch and tips his chair back so far he almost falls off, in open defiance of school rules. She's sure he infuriates all his teachers, but they're the ones who let him slip through the cracks in the first place, so she doesn't have much sympathy. 

He's the talk of the school, the mysterious, reckless,  _attractive_ guy who might or might not be new. Kim smirks at her old clique each time they see her talking to him and shoot her jealous looks, and Billy explains to everyone who'll listen that Zack isn't new, he's just been going through some stuff and hasn't been able to make it to class for a while. Jason lets it be known that Zack is not to be messed with, spreading the message through the student body quietly but firmly. He's not the pariah he once was, is almost back to his old golden boy status, and people listen when Jason Scott talks. 

(“Honestly it's to protect them from you more than you from them,” he says, when Zack informs him snappily that he can look after himself. “Plus Zordon would kill me if he thought I was letting you be reckless with your ranger powers in school, and getting into a fight with bullies totally counts.” Zack rolls his eyes, says some very unkind things about disembodied aliens who should mind their own business, but drops the subject.)

Trini, for her part, goes through her days like nothing's changed. She and Zack don't share any classes, and neither of them are the type to hang around after school's out, so the most they see of each other is during lunch and the occasional passing period. It would have been nice to be able to pass notes in class, like she can with the others, but she's just glad he's there at all. Her mom's almost stopped nagging her about her social life, not that that gives Trini any particular peace at home. Still, it's something she can use to stand up for herself, one small piece of ammunition to throw back at her parents when they push too hard.

It's February when he catches her after school, darting through the crowd like the competent martial artist he is, and asks her to come home with him. “It's my mom,” he says. “She's been asking to meet my friends.”

“Why me?” Trini asks, as they drift away from the throng of students leaving the building. Her phone buzzes in her pocket; Kim, probably, asking if she wants to hang out for a while. She lets it be.

“She can really only see one person at a time,” he says. “And, well, she doesn't really speak English. She was learning!” He sounds proud and defensive, the way he always does when he talks about her. He loves her so much it aches, that much has been obvious from the beginning, and sometimes Trini thinks she can see the contradictions of that love tearing him apart. It's not that bad right now, but she can still hear the feelings behind his words, and nods encouragingly. “She understands a lot, and she was taking night classes after work and getting me to help her with her pronunciation. I thought it was stupid, but I was just a kid, you know?” She nods again. “But then she got sick, and, well, you know the story.” Trini does, or at least the rough outlines.

Still, he didn't answer her question. “Why me?” she asks again.

“You're quiet,” he says. “I love Kim and Jason, you know I do, but I wouldn't put either of them in a sick room in a million years, and can you imagine Billy with someone he can't talk to? I wouldn't do that to him, that would be cruel.” He shifts his weight, resettling the backpack he refuses to wear with both straps. “You don't have to, if you're busy. I know you and Kim probably have plans.” 

Trini considers. She thinks about the last time she was with someone she didn't know who didn't speak her language, thinks about the time her mom flew her abuela up to visit them and they spent an entire week awkwardly looking at each other, unable to really talk or connect. It was another way she'd failed at being a good daughter, sitting there in silence while her baby brothers gurgled cutely and held their arms up for abuela to bounce them on her knee. She's about to take the excuse he gave her, to apologetically back out and run away, like she always used to do. But it's Zack, and he's looking at her with that careful, blank expression she almost never sees anymore, and she can't. So she says, “I'd love to meet your mom,” and it's worth it to see that blank expression break into a genuine smile.

It takes almost an hour to hike back to Zack's house. They don't talk about his mom, or why they're going to see her, but instead trade gossip about school and the drama surrounding the Valentine's Day dance. Zack's been asked by at least a dozen girls and half as many boys, and Trini's gotten a couple offers herself, though she's pretty sure they're just guys who want to cozy up to Jason. By the time they reach the trailor park they're imagining trying to explain the concept of Valentine's Day to Zordon and laughing. The laughter fades as Zack slows to a stop in front of a nondescript trailer and pulls a key out from his bag. “This one,” he says, and pushes open the door.

Trini hangs back, trailing after him as he steps inside. It's weird to think of this as the place Zack lives; for as long as she's known him he's been outside, leaning against tree trunks or sprawled out on cliffs, one tiny part of a much bigger world. Here, in the cramped kitchen, he seems out of place, for all that it's his home. He motions for her to wait and crosses to a closed door. His mom's bedroom, she assumes. She notices that he's taken his shoes off, and she bends to take off her own, lining them up next to his by the door. As she waits she studies the kitchen, noting the dishes piled up in the sink and the dust on top of the cabinets. There's no food left out, though, and the sun comes in through the window in the door. It's not a bad place, just not one that fits with her mental image of Zack at all. Then again, from how often he spends the night outside, maybe she's not the only one who feels that way.

He pokes his head out from the room and gestures for her to come in. Slowly, she crosses the kitchen and steps into the bedroom, finding herself face to face with a small, bedbound Chinese woman. She looks old and frail, but her smile is warm and she holds her hands out to Trini.

“It is good to meet you,” she says, in heavily accented, obviously carefully memorized English. Trini closes the distance between them and gently takes her hands, more mindful than ever of her ranger strength. Zack's mom doesn't look much like him, but that might be the ravages of illness. Hesitantly, Trini smiles back. Zack's mom squeezes her hands and doesn't let go, though she looks over to her son and says something in Chinese. Zack shakes his head. She speaks again, sounding more insistent this time, a torrent of words that go over Trini's head but make Zack grimace. When she's done he nods.

“Okay mom,” he says, and offers Trini a crooked smile. “She's reading me the riot act because I didn't offer you anything to eat. I'll be right back.”

“It's fine,” Trini says hurriedly. “I ate at lunch, I'm fine.”

“It's a cultural thing,” he says. “You want guests to feel at home, and that means not letting them go hungry.” Before she can object further he's gone, presumably to the kitchen to find something to feed her.

Zack's mom too is looking at the door. After a moment she looks back at Trini, smiling again. “He is good boy,” she says, and Trini nods.

“Yeah,” she agrees.

“He talks much about you,” his mom insists. “Is...” she frowns, looking for the words. Trini waits, keeping half an eye on her and half an eye on the door. Finally, Zack's mom shakes her head, frustrated. “English no good,” she says.

“It's fine,” Trini assures her. “He talks about you too.”

Zack's mom sighs. “He is good boy,” she repeats. 

Zack comes back then, expertly balancing a tray with one hand and holding a mug in the other. The mug he offers to Trini. “Tea,” he says. “Split the difference between you not being hungry and her not being a good host.”

Trini gently untangles her hands from Zack's mom and takes the mug with a murmured thanks. Zack sets the tray down on the bed and helps his mom sit up a bit, touch gentle. Trini looks away; it feels like a violation of her friend's privacy, watching something so intimate. His mom says something in Chinese, and he nods. Trini focuses on her tea, which is still steaming a little, letting their conversation happen without her trying to listen in. It's the thought that counts, since she couldn't understand it anyway, but she still makes the gesture.

Slowly, Zack starts helping his mom eat, and brings Trini into their conversation, a somewhat stilted affair since everything has to go through him. Still, Trini finds that it's not as bad as she worried it would be, and she thinks she likes Zack's mom, with her gentle handshake and surprising sense of humor. When she's done eating she asks, through Zack, if Trini plays chess. When Trini admits that she doesn't, she turns to Zack and out comes another stream of Chinese, in a tone that, even across the language barrier comes across as a firm command. Zack sighs, makes a show of being reluctant, and reaches behind him to get out a slightly battered box.

“She wants me to teach you,” he says. “Says it would do me good to win sometimes.”

Trini laughs. “Because your ego needs so much help,” she says. “Show me how this works.”

Zack looks from her to his mom and back, shaking his head even as he sets up the board and the pieces. “I just realized that I have made a terrible mistake,” he announces to no one in particular.

“Aw, you know you love us,” Trini says, and his mom nods, saying something to Zack that makes him look away, embarrassed. Trini and his mom exchange looks, both smiling, and Trini feels the last of her anxiety slip away. Zack talks about his mom with the kind of raw emotion she used to think existed only in movies, and now she sees why. She can't fix the past, or the future, not for either Zack or his mom, or even for herself, but she can sit here and let him teach her how to play chess while his mom corrects him and shares smiles with her, and it can, finally, be enough.

 

 


End file.
